As we told you on Monday, Gilbert Arenas is not trying to be an entertainer anymore and is strictly focusing on taking care of business on the court. This is a video of Agent Zero training with Tim Grover over the summer at ATTACK Athletics in Chicago. Arenas looks like he’s in great shape and judging by the jumping drills the knee is back at full strength.

During this past offseason, when the Toronto Raptors and the Philadelphia 76ers swapped Jason Kapono for Reggie Evans, it looked like a minor move that help fill general needs for both teams – the Sixers were dying for outside shooting and the Raptors were looking to add some toughness and rebounding to the mix.

Now that camps have officially opened, we’re seeing that Raptors seemed to have a specific role in mind for Evans when they acquired him – to beat the hell out of Andrea Bargnani. Read More »

NBA training camps are underway, meaning it’s time again for Dime’s team-by-team season previews. Last year we debuted the “Highs and Lows” system — predicting the respective ceilings and basements for each team. In other words, what is the realistic best-case and worst-case scenario for the 2009-10 campaign?

Added: Tyreke Evans, Omri Casspi, Jon Brockman, Sergio Rodriguez, Sean May, Desmond Mason Read More »

Every NBA team has a go-to guy, and there’s really only room for one. And it’s not strictly who takes the last-second shot. It’s the guy who regularly gets the ball when things are getting tense in the fourth; the guy expected to calm things down when teammates are getting sloppy; the guy called upon to snuff out an opponent’s rally, or spark a rally of his own; the guy who’s not just supposed to make shots, but make the right decisions. Bottom line: Who do you want the offense to run through when everything is on the line? From #30 to #1 (one per team), these are the League’s best go-to guys… Read More »

As a Sixers fan, seeing Andre Iguodala living in the gym and forcing himself to make (“not take”) 500-1,000 jumpers a day is great news. Hopefully Lou and Jrue were somewhere doing the same thing …

‘Dre’s underhand-off-the-wall-nothing-but-net isn’t bad either…

Via The700Level

Everybody loves to root for the underdog. I’ve watched enough summer leagues and D-League reality shows to appreciate the hustle professional basketball players who are not in the NBA have. A lot of times, these players turn down big money overseas to take their chances in an NBA training camp to reach their dream. Here are five dreamers whose gamble could pay off. Read More »

When people ask me for a Greg Oden story, I usually tell them the one from the ’07 Rookie Photo Shoot. That was the year Oden was supposed to make his NBA debut before microfracture knee surgery delayed his rookie season for another calendar turn. At the time, we were still putting together our cover feature on Oden for Dime #35, and I was going to help get some extra quotes.

“Do you love basketball?” I asked Oden. His answer was something along the lines of, “Yeah. I mean, I’ve been playing since I was a kid.” It wasn’t so much what he said, but how he said it — he sounded like somebody who was trying to convince themselves of something they know isn’t true. Read More »

We’ve been on to Nike Pro Combat for a minute, playing in the stuff whenever we get a chance. That’s why when I saw this commercial of LBJ preparing for battle, I knew I could hang with the MVP. (At least for a minute.)

One of the most interesting parts of the first few days of NBA training camp is seeing the lineups we’ve speculated about all summer finally coming together. Some of them haven’t changed a bit, some of them look real good, and some — try Chris Duhon, Wilson Chandler, Danilo Gallinari, Al Harrington and David Lee in New York — just look good and terrible … Speaking of Gallo, apparently Mike D’Antoni has fallen back in love with the kid and is talking him up big-time. After the Knicks fans booed him out of MSG at the draft, the quick assumption was that Gallo would be the next Skita Tskitishvili, but if he stays healthy and carves out a nice little Andrea Bargnani-like niche for himself, that’s a big W for the Knicks … Read More »

Most of us in the Dime office were huge on collecting basketball and baseball cards as kids. Growing up in the ’90s, I would buy packs of cards by the masses trying to get one of those rare, one in a 1,000 pack cards. The chase was a lot like finding the golden ticket in the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. One person who is trying to bring that excitement back to collecting cards is Kobe Bryant. Read More »